


We make something (out of nothing)

by starcut_sand



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, I wrote this forever ago, What Did You Expect, also yes the title is a hayley kiyoko lyric, but it's halloween and everyone knows that means snaibselversary so, i keep coming back to it and tbh I can't tell anymore if it's good or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcut_sand/pseuds/starcut_sand
Summary: They sat in silence for a while. The only thing making noise was the sound of crickets in the dark and the breeze rustling the grass. If she hadn’t already known, Artemis never would have guessed that beneath them was a high-tech facility of teenage superheroes getting up to superpowered hijinks. That all seemed a world away now.“It’s nice on top of the mountain,” Zatanna said after a while. “I didn’t even know there was a path up here.” She turned to study Artemis, as if waiting for a reaction.“Yeah,” Artemis said, but didn’t say anything else.





	We make something (out of nothing)

It was a quiet night. Happy Harbor glittered beneath them like somebody had scooped stars from the sky and poured them in a pile on the earth, and a cool breeze swept over them from the beach. It smelled like sand and salt. The ground crunched beneath them as they sat down.

“Wow,” Zatanna said. “It’s way peaceful out here compared to inside.”

“Well, inside Wally and Robin are trying to make up their own handshake, so that’s not hard,” Artemis said.

Zatanna snorted. “I feel like that doesn’t really capture the entirety of the chaos. I’m pretty sure when we left Wally was suggesting a backflip.”

“He’s gonna get himself taken to the hospital,” Artemis said, and Zatanna hummed in agreement.

They sat in silence for a while. The only thing making noise was the sound of crickets in the dark and the breeze rustling the grass. If she hadn’t already known, Artemis never would have guessed that beneath them was a high-tech facility of teenage superheroes getting up to superpowered hijinks. That all seemed a world away now.

“It’s nice on top of the mountain,” Zatanna said after a while. “I didn’t even know there was a path up here.” She turned to study Artemis, as if waiting for a reaction.

“Yeah,” Artemis said, but didn’t say anything else.

They stared in silence at Happy Harbor.

“I’m gonna braid your hair,” Zatanna said.

“Uh, sure?”

Zatanna scooched herself behind Artemis. “Your hair is so long. Isn’t it hard to handle?”

“Yeah,” Artemis said. “I like it that way, though.” She hesitated. “My dad is the only other one in the family with blonde hair.”

Zatanna didn’t say anything. Artemis could feel her hands, separating her hair into sections.

“I think it really frustrated me,” she said. “I mean, I never wanted to be like my dad. He always kept his hair short. He told me mine would be better short. More practical for the family business.”

“So you kept it long?”

“As long as I possibly could.”

Zatanna hummed in amusement. “Well, I like your hair. It’s super soft. Great for braiding.”

“Thanks.” Artemis was good at keeping her voice casual, but she was glad that Zatanna couldn’t see her face. She was smiling too much to look normal.

She’d had a thing for Zatanna for a while, she was pretty sure. Zee was confident, and sassy, and so sure of herself. If it had been someone else, it might have made Artemis insecure, but with Zatanna, it was the opposite. Zatanna made her feel important. With her, she was comfortable and relaxed. She didn’t need to hide anything.

And, okay, she’d kept the secret of her family from her for months. But it had been hard when it was Zatanna. Whenever she’d asked what Artemis was hiding, with that concerned look on her face like she thought Artemis might be in some kind of trouble and needed help, Artemis felt like she was slowly disintegrating on the inside until all that was left of her would be an empty shell full of lies and nothing else.

“It’s funny,” Zatanna said, breaking Artemis out of her thoughts. “I always wanted to be exactly like my dad and nothing like him at the same time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Zatanna paused a beat. “He was like this big hero, right, and he was on the Justice League. He’s super great at the mystic arts. But I was so frustrated all the time with him, because he never let me do anything. I always thought he shouldn’t worry so much.” Zatanna went quiet for a second. Her hands still wove through Artemis’s hair. Artemis could feel the rhythmic tug on her roots, pulling her head backwards just a little each time. Zatanna started talking again.

“When I became a hero, and joined the Justice League, I was going to be cool. I would help out kids who wanted to be heroes and teach them. Like a cool aunt to all the kid heroes.”

Zatanna stopped talking again. Artemis felt the need to say something, anything, to fill up the silence.

“We’ll get your dad back,” she said.

Zatanna didn’t respond, but her hands stopped braiding for a moment.

“Yeah,” she said, but it sounded flat.

“Zee, I’m serious. We’ll help you. He’s not gone. All we need to do is get the helmet off his head. And that’s been done before.”

There was a long silence.

“Thanks, Artemis. That… thanks.” Zatanna didn’t sound flat anymore, which Artemis figured was good.

“Yeah, anytime,” Artemis said, which sounded stupid. Ugh, she was so bad at this. She pictured Edna Mode in her head, slapping her with a newspaper:  _ Pull! Yourself! Together!  _

“You know,” Zatanna said thoughtfully. Artemis knew that tone of voice well enough to know that she was planning trouble. “I don’t really feel like going back to the party just yet.”

Artemis turned to face her, a sly smile on her face. “What do you have in mind?”

…

Happy Harbor was a bit of a tourist trap. It wasn’t crazy (because Zatanna had seen crazy. She lived in Manhattan.) but it had the feel of a touristy place. There was a lot of boutiques and restaurants that boasted local foods. The streets were well-lit, even at night. And there was still a fair amount of people around. Not as much as you might see during the day, but they were definitely there. Zatanna and Artemis had ditched their motorcycles when they’d gotten into town for that very reason- they were both in civvies, and pretty obviously under the driving age.

“So, what are we doing?” Artemis asked.

“Ummm,” Zatanna scanned the stores in front of them, before giving up. “I dunno. Didn’t really think ahead this far.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” Artemis said. “We’re not great at this, are we?”

“Please, we’re amazing at this,” Zatanna said. “Spontaneity is the spice of life.”

“Isn’t that variety?”

“Yeah, that too.”

Artemis rolled her eyes, but smiled at Zatanna. Zatanna smiled back, teasing.

“So… wander the streets?”

“Wander the streets.”

They started walking around, meandering slowly.

The streets were well-lit, casting everything in an orangish glow. The sky above them was dark gray, full of clouds. A dirty newspaper tumbled past them, pushed by the wind. It wasn’t a perfect night, Zatanna thought, but it was still pretty good. Artemis was wearing the braid Zatanna had given her- she’d done a fishtail, to be fancy. 

Artemis didn’t know how to braid hair, which was good, because Zatanna loved braiding her hair. It was great braiding material, and Artemis was a good conversationalist. Most people would think she was joking when she said that, but it was true. She and Artemis just seemed to click in a way that she didn’t with the rest of the team. Not that they weren’t her friends, but when it was just her and Artemis, things were different. They could bounce back and forth in conversation for hours, or say nothing at all and still understand each other.

In a weird way, Zatanna took a sort of pride in it.  _ Yeah, me and my best friend are this tight. Bet you wish you had Artemis for a best friend. Sike! You can’t! She’s mine! _

Of course, she knew that Artemis wasn’t hers exclusively. She could do whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted. But even though it felt kind of silly and petty, Zatanna wanted to be the  _ closest _ one. The one Artemis liked the  _ most. _

Black Canary said she had a crush. Zatanna thought she was probably right, but she hadn’t decided what to do about that yet. She’d figure it out. Hopefully by spending more time with Artemis. She could always think more clearly when Artemis was around.

“You know, this is pretty dangerous,” Artemis said.

Zatanna shot her a confused look. “What?”

“Well, here we are, two unprotected girls, drifting aimlessly through the streets in the middle of the night…”

“Oh  _ dear,” _ Zatanna said, smiling. “How _ ever _ will I survive on the streets unprotected?” she put the back of her hand up to her forehead, like she was a high-class woman from the middle ages who was about to faint. “You’ll just have to protect me.”

Artemis laughed. “And who’s going to protect me?”

“Eh,” Zatanna said, putting her arm down and going back to her normal voice. “You can take care of yourself.”

“Hey!” Artemis punched halfheartedly at Zatanna’s arm, but she was laughing. Zatanna was laughing as well. Between snickers, she choked out, “Don’t-  _ punch _ me, meanie!” And punched Artemis back. Which only made Artemis laugh harder.

“If anybody sees us, they’re going to think we’re drunk,” Zatanna said, trying to regain control of herself.

“Yeah.” Artemis was still giggling uncontrollably. “We can tell them you called me a meanie.”

“Why does that make a difference?”

“Who’s brave enough to drink underage in a crowded town, but can only come up with ‘meanie’ as a good insult?”

Zatanna started laughing again.

“Well, you  _ punched _ me.”

“It was barely a lovetap. And that’s not even the point.”

“Sure. You don’t know your own strength, is all I’m saying.”

“Uh huh,” Artemis said. “I barely even touched you.”

Zatanna giggled again, then took a deep breath to compose herself. She scanned the streets, saying the first thing that came to mind. “We should get ice cream.”

“What?”

“Subject change. Keep up, Arty. We should get ice cream.”

“It’s already cold out,” Artemis said.

“So what?”

Artemis shrugged. “Fair enough.”

…

They’d chosen the first ice cream place they’d come across, which turned out to be overpriced. Artemis should have expected that, honestly. Tourist trap all the way. Zatanna paid, because she was the one with more money between the two of them. Artemis said she’d pay her back, but Zatanna waved her off.

“It’s what friends are for,” she said. “Mooching money off of.”

They’d taken their ice cream outside, walking and eating. Artemis bit her ice cream, much to the horror of Zatanna. Eventually they settled in a pretty abandoned park that overlooked the harbor.

It was pretty windy here, unobstructed by the buildings. Flyaway strands of hair blew around Artemis’s face, and Zatanna tied her hair up magically in a ponytail. Her hair was in loose curls. That was her natural hair, Artemis knew. She straightened it a lot, but Artemis didn’t know why. Her hair looked nice like this too.

Zatanna looked pretty, in a different way than she usually did. The tenseness that she sometimes carried in her shoulders, the clenching of her jaw, was gone. Instead, she listened to the sound of waves crashing and the whistling of wind with a peaceful look on her face. She was holding herself loosely. 

Artemis loved her in that moment, so much that she thought it could be palpable in the air around them. Maybe that was a weird thing to think when she was only fifteen, with a girl she wasn’t even dating, but it was true.

“Zee,” she said, “You’re amazing.”

Zatanna looked over at her. “I’m amazing?” She was smiling amusedly, but she wasn’t trying to turn it into a joke. Instead, she was waiting for more.

“Yeah,” Artemis said. “You’re amazing.”

“Okay,” Zatanna said. “So are you.”

“No,” Artemis glanced out at the waves, trying to think of what she meant. “That’s different. I mean, you’re really amazing. You’ve got this confidence, that, it…” she paused. “It makes you… authentic.”

Zatanna smiled at her, a genuine smile that made her eyes glow with happiness. Somewhere in the darkness, the waves crashed.

“That’s not different. You do that too.”

Artemis snorted incredulously. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I get what you mean, Artemis,” Zatanna said. She positioned herself so that she was sitting with one leg folded on the bench, the other dangling off. “But you do that too. You push your way through life and don’t take no for an answer. You don’t compromise yourself.”

Artemis rolled her eyes, but she was smiling wide. She was pretty sure they were flirting now. Or something like that. “I compromised myself on that mission last week.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

Zatanna was looking at her. She looked intense, as if the world would end if Artemis didn’t understand what she meant.

“Yeah,” Artemis said again, softly this time. “I know.”

The wind blew past them as they stared at each other. It was dark, but Zatanna was lit by the orange glow of a nearby sidewalk light.

Zatanna leaned forward and kissed her.

What was surprising was that Artemis wasn’t surprised. She closed her eyes and leaned into it. She was a good kisser, she’d been told that before. She’d kissed a lot of people. But somehow kissing Zatanna Zatara was different, just because it was her. Zatanna, who spoke backwards and straightened her hair and wanted her father back. Zatanna, who always had a good comeback and liked to wear boots that made her look older than she was. Zatanna, who always knew what to say.

Artemis had been wanting this for a long time.

It was Zatanna who pulled back first. She was breathing a little heavily, and her eyes were fixed on Artemis, watching for her reaction.

Artemis, for her part, was grinning like an idiot. “That was pretty cool,” she said. “Let’s do it again.”

Zatanna looked surprised, but only for a second. Then her face relaxed, and she laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s.”

Artemis leaned forward this time. Zatanna’s lips on hers was the most right feeling in the world, the best she’d ever felt since she’d been asked to join the team. Zatanna was leaning into it, and Artemis’s arms were wrapped around her, pulling her close. Zatanna pulled her lips away for a second, her face so close Artemis could feel her breath. “You’re still holding your ice cream. It better not get on the back of my shirt.”

Artemis laughed breathily. “Don’t worry,” she said, leaning in to kiss her again. “There’s no more ice cream. It’s just cone now.”

“Mmm. It better be.”

The wind was blowing hair across her face. She didn’t know if it was hers or Zatanna’s. She didn’t care.

 

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote this forever ago, for a friend, but I never posted it. It's halloween though, and I'm feeling festive. but busy with my other fic. so you get this.
> 
> fun fact: I was gonna say that I haven't done anything in this fic so it might not be accurate, but then I realized that I have, in fact, left a crazy gathering to go off in the middle of the night with my best friend and secret crush to get overpriced ice cream and then sit by the water and compliment each other. (the night did not end in kissing, unfortunately. she's already got a girlfriend.)
> 
> but that happened like three months after I wrote this. coincidences, huh?


End file.
